Category: Personal Security

Watch your back

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Leave the Party

Like so many tech trends, once something becomes mainstream it simply loses its appeal.  I started DIY mining years ago but quickly figured out that the cost of the hardware, maintenance and most importantly my electricity bill made it a potentially high overhead experiment.

With some many active serious investors hunting for crypto currency, the energy costs are ramping up.

BitCoin costs too much energy (report May 2018)

This report suggests that in a few short months it will no longer be feasible to mine cryptocurrency.  Hopefully, the masses will get the heads-up and go back to what they were doing before the media hype.

Cryptocurrency cost on the rise

 

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Crypto Fool

My Omnia Cloud mining has yielded disappointing results so far but this is not surprising considering the massive drop in values.

After an initial investment of 500 USD
Current mining Earnings 0.72 USD per day
Means it will take a whopping 694 Days to break even,
...that's just under 2 years.

It seems Omnia makes more money from the Multi-Level Marketing aspect than the actual mining at the moment.  The Pay-out procedure is very rigid, ridiculously slow and non-transparent only allowing me to withdrawal my cryptocurrency once (1) a week on Thursdays.

With this scenario, it’s easy to see why Newbie Crypto investors would be sceptical but it all depends on your reasons for getting into Crypto.  For me, the opportunity to remain unseen by central banking is attractive.  Also,  sidestepping the technical hassle and cost of setting up mining servers is excellent.

Today’s Lesson: Define your Crypto goals whether it’s short-term profit to be transferred back to Central banks or leveraging the ability to buy or sell using Cryptocurrencies.

After all, Money is just one big Game anyway

Where’s my Hash Power? – Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
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The Angry Black Man factor (Justified)

My parents came to England in the early 60’s and did alright for themselves, they had me, protected me and for the most part, guided me to success.  It was inspiring to see one of the few UK Black Members of Parliament stepping up to the plate and representing with strength and compassion.

I ain’t mad at Cha

Meanwhile, I caught some NPCs taking time out to relax.

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It’s all about YOU

So with just over 31 days to go before the European Laws change the game, it’s important to know how this may impact you in real life.

Art. 33 GDPR Notification of a personal data breach to the supervisory authority

In the case of a personal data breach, the controller shall without undue delay and, where feasible, not later than 72 hours after having become aware of it, notify the personal data breach to the supervisory authority competent in accordance with Article 55, unless the personal data breach is unlikely to result in a risk to the rights and freedoms of natural persons. Where the notification to the supervisory authority is not made within 72 hours, it shall be accompanied by reasons for the delay.

Clearly, the Lawyers and consultants will win in the end

Vague terms such as “undue delay” still gives weak protection for individuals but the game changer is 72 hours to tell everybody you’ve been hacked.

I can see more blackmail attempts coming forth as companies look to delay public notification.  The big telecoms companies are well prepared and have started notifying end-users of the legal changes but there is not much comments or chatter on how this will change the Hacker community.

The important thing is now you can sue someone when the big hacks happen….and they WILL happen.

Let the legal games begin

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Life is Strange (The End?)

I concluded Season One of this unusual emotional gaming drama and the authors created a brilliant environment pulling you into actually caring for a character and then dropping you into the ultimate dilemma of sacrificing that same character.

Titles as deep as this are few and far between but thoroughly enjoyable like a good book or fine wine.

IRL I’m getting some pesky weak web application attacks from 193.201.224.193

person: Bondarenko Viktor
address: Ukraine, Kiev, Jilyanskaya street, 12
phone: +380684956523

Dear Viktor, please go away.

Life Is Strange – Tough decisions
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Re-calculating

Every time I jump onto a plane it’s a chance to re-calculate my life choices and look at things from a different angle.  This time around, I’ll be testing out the Google DNS alternative 1.1.1.1 from a technical and personal perspective.

1.1.1.1 for consumers should speed things up a bit and sidestep the monitoring and logging from Internet Service Providers.  Naturally, I’ll start with my PS4 and later on selected routers and servers.

Breaking up is hard to do

Leaving the default settings active is the easier thing to do and creates a nice comfort factor as things just work as expected.  Messing with your settings and configuration can cause you a world of headaches.  As usual, the best practice is backup, backup and then test your backup.  Warning: You can “BREAK” your internet connection by messing with DNS.

In the meantime, check 1.1.1.1 for a non-technical guide to a brand new cleaner Internet experience.